


see the lightning in your eyes

by greeksalad



Series: ah yes, sapphics (avatar wlw week) [2]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Competition, F/F, First Kiss, Getting Together, Track and Field, can you tell i have a giant crush on kuvira lmao, its rarepair hours folks, korra’s just here for a good time, kuvira is way too competitive, played pretty loosely w the prompt for this one oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26227840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeksalad/pseuds/greeksalad
Summary: See, here’s the thing about Kuvira: shealways wins.
Relationships: Korra/Kuvira (Avatar)
Series: ah yes, sapphics (avatar wlw week) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903480
Comments: 11
Kudos: 99





	see the lightning in your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: high school au

Letting her breath escape her in a long, smooth exhale, Kuvira bends over and touches her toes.

The burn in her calf muscles is simultaneously soothing and a call to action, like tension in a bowstring before the arrow is loosed. Twisting her body and stretching her arms out in an arc over her head, she lets that burn zip through her body, sparking along the knots of her spine and tingling at the very tips of her toes. It’s good, familiar, and Kuvira has to consciously school her expression into one of calmness, lest she break out in a giddy smile at the pre-emptive adrenaline surging through her veins. That wouldn’t do; she has a reputation to uphold, after all. Can’t come off as intimidating and serious if you’re bouncing around like an idiot.

“Hey there!”

Kuvira only just stops herself from groaning aloud. _Speaking of idiots…_

Taking her sweet, sweet time, Kuvira pulls out of her lunge and lifts her head - not that she _needs_ a visual confirmation of who’s talking to her. No, she knows that voice well enough at this point.

Standing in front of her, brown bob pulled up into a messy half-ponytail and wearing a criminally tight muscle tee, is her long-time rival, Korra Imiq. She’s got one hand on her hip, the other raised in greeting, and there’s an ~~adorable~~ dorky smile on her face.

See, here’s the thing about Kuvira: she _always wins._ When she campaigned for Head Girl at Zaofu High, she won by a landslide, and she’s come first place in every single ballet competition she’s ever entered. Boxing? Never lost a match. Debating? If her opponent hasn’t pissed themselves out of fear by the time she’s left the stage, she considers it a loss – and she’s _never lost._ Sprints? First place, every time.

That is, up until two seasons ago, when fucking _Korra_ showed up.

Kuvira had never been beaten at anything _in her life,_ and she certainly hadn’t expected to be bested by a buff, alarmingly friendly girl with her race number pinned on her back upside down.

She’d accepted her silver medal with a smile and a polite nod, but inside she’d _seethed._ Who did this girl think she was, waltzing into _Kuvira’s_ competition and taking _her_ gold medal?

And so she’d trained for the next competition with the intensity of a woman possessed, running drill after drill until she was _sure_ her sprint time was unbeatable, and yet, _somefuckinghow,_ Korra had come out on top once again.

In spite of it all, she found herself begrudgingly admiring Korra, much to the disgust of the over-competitive part of her brain. She was an incredible athlete, irrefutably, and Kuvira couldn’t deny that she was a pleasure to watch compete – as a talented fellow athlete, of course, and _not_ because Korra was absolutely stunning.

If Kuvira’s dreams frequently involved either punching Korra in the face or having Korra shove her up against a wall with those huge arms, then, well, that was no one’s business but her own.

Kuvira refuses to let Korra beat her this time. She has to win. She _needs_ to win.

“…thought I’d come say hi,” Korra’s saying, and Kuvira realises belatedly that Korra’s been chatting away about God-knows-what for the last thirty seconds.

Kuvira’s mastery of the poker face comes in clutch, as it often does, and she nods, reaching her arms behind her head in an overhead triceps stretch. “How nice of you,” she says smoothly, voice lazily impassive in that _is she being sarcastic or genuine, or does she just not care?_ way she’s proud of to have perfected over the last seventeen years.

She maintains eye contact with Korra the entire time. She _knows_ she’s intimidating, knows the effect she has when she locks eyes with someone and refuses to look away – her debate teammates have dubbed it “the Green Gaze of Destruction.” Yet, for some reason, Korra doesn’t look phased at all, just keeps on smiling and bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. It makes her look rather like an over-excited puppy.

“Well, I’d better get going – Lin’s gonna beat my ass if I don’t stretch properly,” Korra says, then laughs a little and looks Kuvira up and down. (Kuvira can’t stop the small shiver rolling down her spine at the way Korra’s eyes rake across her exposed abdomen, and she immediately hates herself for it.) “Looks like you’re way ahead of me, huh? Anyway, good luck with the race! It was nice talking to you!”

Korra turns and starts to jog away, and suddenly Kuvira’s calling out to her. “I don’t need luck, Korra.”

_Stupid, stupid, why did you-_

Korra’s footsteps falter for a beat, and then she spins around so she’s walking backwards, hair whipping around her face at the sudden motion. There’s a twinkle in her eye, sharp and playful, and _oh, yeah,_ that’s _why._

“Oh?” Korra says, cocking her head to the side, which doesn’t help with the whole puppy-dog vibe she’s got going on. “And what makes you say that, Kuvira?”

The sound of Korra saying her name, the way each syllable rolls off her tongue, makes little jolts of lightning dart through her veins. It spreads through her body, filling her up with a hot wave of adrenaline, fuelling her, and Kuvira feels _dangerous._ She crosses her arms across her chest, quirks a brow, and, although her voice is low, it carries across the track. “Well, you see, Korra, I _want_ to win-”

(She tilts her chin up and meets Korra’s gaze. Brilliant blue meets piercing green, and Korra’s tongue darts out to wet her upper lip. Internally, Kuvira smirks like a cat that got the cream. She _knows_ it’s stupid to flirt with a pretty girl (let alone her _opponent)_ right before a race, _knows_ she shouldn’t be letting herself get so distracted, but she can’t help it. Something about Korra makes her want to make bad decisions.)

When she opens her mouth again, the words pour from her lips as smoothly as molten metal.

“-and I _always_ get what I want.”

She swears she sees Korra shiver.

\---

The starting gun fires, and Kuvira _flies._

She narrows her eyes, narrows her mind, until all she can see is that strip of white paint in the distance, and she _runs._

And right at her side, matching her step for step, is Korra. 

If Kuvira is a machine, fuelled by her own desire to succeed and _excel,_ each footfall planned, each breath perfunctory, then Korra is a bird. 

Kuvira can catch nothing more than glimpses of her, side by side as they are, just little fragments of tan skin and lean muscle and bouncy hair, but Korra pulls ahead for a moment, and that’s when Kuvira sees it.

She’s _smiling._

There’s an expression of pure, unfiltered joy on Korra’s face as she runs – if she didn’t need to control her breathing, she looks like she would be laughing.

The realisation hits Kuvira like a punch to the gut: she looks… _free._

The idea of that is unfathomable.

They’re so close to the finish line now, still neck and neck, but Kuvira’s legs are starting to burn, whereas Korra’s feet still barely skim the track, as if she’s being spurred on the winds themselves, and Kuvira knows, deep in her heart, that she’s going to lose once again.

Then, out of nowhere, Korra’s pace falters.

Kuvira’s eyes lock onto hers for half a second, nothing more than an inscrutable flash of blue, before Kuvira’s flying over the line with a half-formulated question on her lips.

She’s half a step ahead of Korra.

\---

“Why did you let me win?”

Korra whips around, lips parted in a small _o_ at the sheer _fury_ in Kuvira’s voice.

Kuvira stalks up to her, not even caring about the fact that she’s _definitely_ overreacting, because she’s _had it up to here with people’s pity, she’s had enough_ , and she jabs her finger into Korra’s chest. “Why did you let me win?” she repeats, eyes narrowed and blazing.

Korra blinks, looking more confused than scared (which pisses Kuvira off even more), and adjusts the weight of her gym bag on her shoulder. “I don’t care about winning,” is all she says.

The hand jabbing into Korra’s collarbone shifts to grip the collar of her Republic City High jacket, and Kuvira uses it to tug Korra’s face a little close. She’s got half an inch on Korra, and she intends to take full advantage of that height difference.

“So you let me win out of pity? Is that what this is?” Kuvira asks, and her voice has gone from spitting mad to cold and tense with whiplash speed.

Everyone knows that cold, stone-faced Kuvira is much, _much_ worse than openly angry Kuvira.

Everyone, that is, _except Korra_ , because she just shrugs – a little awkwardly, because Kuvira’s still got a tight grip on the front of her jacket and so her upper body is at a weird angle, but somehow she still manages to look nonchalant. “Nah,” she says. “I just wanted an excuse to talk to you.”

And that, _that’s_ enough to shock Kuvira into calming down a little. She loosens her hold on Korra’s shirt slightly and takes a step back, and desperately hopes she isn’t making some weird facial expression right now. She’s careful not to let her voice shake. “Explain.”

Korra rolls out her shoulders and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. She looks a little guilty, at least, but nowhere near enough for Kuvira’s liking. “Look, I think you’re really pretty,” Korra says, and _wow,_ of all the explanations that Kuvira had expected her to produce, that certainly wasn’t on the list. Korra ploughs on, either so caught up in her little spiel that she hasn’t noticed Kuvira’s half-thunderous, half-flabbergasted expression or just doesn’t care. “That whole _I always get what I want_ thing _?_ Yeah, that was _super_ hot.” To Kuvira’s amusement, Korra actually _blushes._ “Anyway, uh, I lost because I figured you’d get mad at me and track me down – which you did, so, congrats on being predictable, I guess.”

“I feel like you’re insulting me,” Kuvira says, a little dumbly, and resolutely ignores the flush now staining her own cheeks.

Korra raises her head, locks eyes with her again, and opens her mouth to say something, and she looks so _unbearably_ pretty in the flickery orange glow of the streetlamps overhead that Kuvira _can’t_ let her say another word or else she might actually die.

“So, let me get this straight. You lost a _regional competition_ so you could… what, chat me up?”

Korra shrugs again, but this time she’s grinning. “Yeah, pretty much. Wanna go out?”

Kuvira blinks, a little taken aback by Korra’s bluntness, and then smiles, all sharp teeth and dimples. It’s not often she meets someone as forward as herself; it’s oddly refreshing.

_Think this through_ , a little part in the back of her brain yells. _Is this really a good idea? She’s your rival, a distraction-_

_Shut up,_ Kuvira tells it, and the voice doesn’t pipe up again. Something in her chest swells happily. She’s never _not_ listened to that little voice before; she doesn’t know what happens now.

The thing is, though, she can’t quite bring herself to worry about it: not when Korra’s making those puppy-dog eyes at her and is smiling so widely, so sweetly hesitant, as she awaits Kuvira’s answer.

“Sure,” Kuvira says, and when Korra holds out her hand to her, she doesn’t hesitate to slot their fingers together.


End file.
